A Year After Charlottesville Melee, Silicon Valley Still Profits Off Extremism

By Jared Holt and Luke Barnes | August 16, 2018 4:01 pm

This article was reported in collaboration with ThinkProgress. It also appears on ThinkProgress.

A year ago, Americans watched on in horror as the extremism and hate of the so-called “alt-right”, which had long been festering online, materialized in a very real and terrifying form on the streets of Charlottesville.

In response to the violence, which left counter-demonstrator Heather Heyer dead and dozens of others injured, tech companies belatedly woke up to the fact that they were effectively providing safe spaces for far-right hate. These companies made promises to the public that they would take action, and soon cracked down on some of the far-right’s most prominent figures and organizations.

Far-right figures were booted off Twitter, domain-hosting companies shut down neo-Nazi forums like Stormfront, and Richard B. Spencer, one of the most immediately recognizable figures in the latest rebirth of the racist white identitarian movement that branded itself an alternative to the likes of the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Confederate groups, has been repeatedly kicked from fundraising platforms.

But one year later, many of the most well-documented hate groups and conveners of extremism online are still operating on the backs of some of the largest tech industry giants. The tech companies are aware of this problem, but they seem to have chosen indifference.

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/a-year-after-charlottesville-melee-silicon-valley-still-profits-off-extremism/